You've made it! Unfortunately, I've been spoiled. Just some keywords...But by my own fault.

Does one of the keywords begin with "p"? Cause that's the one I have learnt before seeing it, saldy. Seems major but hope that that's not the biggest surprise. Well, in terms of the plot it probably is but I'm trying to convince myself that it's not a big deal. Spoiling the scenes, the way they are put together, lines of dialogue etc. is much worse for me. But then again it's so fuckin' hard to avoid that at this point with all the clips, gifs, headlines, even the giggles of PTA and/or the interviewer in spoiler-free podcasts. Movies should be released everywhere at the same time, right? Why aren't they?! At least PTA's movies.

While the 1940 Oscar winner Rebecca has its fingerprints all over Phantom Thread, I wanted to bring to light a couple of other films whose heartbeats pulsate throughout Anderson's film: David Lean's 1949 drama The Passionate Friends and Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 thriller Rear Window. Lean's film shares more similarities to the high society looks and settings of Rebecca and Phantom Thread. Rear Window is the less obvious inspiration but it shares an important connection to Phantom Thread's theme of obsession (while also providing commentary on how physical ailment can sometimes reignite the romance between partners).

In Phantom Thread, Daniel Day-Lewis’s quiet, meticulous dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock falls hard for a young, mysterious woman named Alma (Vicky Krieps). As with any fall, what results is bruising and chaotic—and a significant amount of noise. Reynolds is graceful and exacting. Alma is clumsy and clamorous. He works quietly; she walks heavily, trips, drop things. He insists on eating breakfast in total silence. She chews so loudly even the audience starts to grimace. It’s through these small, bothersome sounds—Alma scraping butter across her toast at breakfast and slowly pouring tea, or Reynolds aggressively cutting his asparagus—that the movie unnerves you, traps you inside the couple’s shared psychosis. The sound is as much a part of the story as the couture, or the characters themselves.

In order to learn the secrets behind Phantom Thread’s evocative sound design—and figure out how they made that toast so damn annoying—Vulture spoke with sound designer and rerecording mixer Christopher Scarabosio. Scarabosio, who’s worked with director Paul Thomas Anderson ever since Punch-Drunk Love and earned an Oscar nomination for There Will Be Blood, developed a plan for Phantom Thread’s specific sound design after watching the complex relationship between the characters play out in an early cut of the film. “I thought, I’m going to base my sound design on the these characters, and way they’re building tension,” he explained.

Scarabosio has previously worked on blockbuster films like The Force Awakens and Rogue One, and noted that a film like Phantom Thread requires a different sort of approach to sound. “Nothing can take you out of the film,” he said. “With a blockbuster, we know we’re going into an action sequence, or a mind-altering sequence, and it’s all about creating exciting and cool sound-design-y moments.” In a film like Phantom Thread, however, with a director like Anderson, the goal is to stay within the story—and match the director’s aesthetic.

Scarabosio began by using rerecorded sounds, or matches, and integrating them into the film with the production sound, i.e., what was recorded on set. That initial sound “was a little rough to start,” Scarabosio said, and since Anderson prefers not to use a lot of additional dialogue recording or Foley effects to reproduce sounds, a lot of Scarabosio’s work involves finding sounds that feel real, like they were recorded in the moment. Because he’d worked with Anderson before, he also knew that the director preferred a “messy” and “not overly polished or produced sound to things,” as he did in Punch-Drunk Love or There Will Be Blood. In essence, the directive was to bring on the irritation, with one caveat—“the fabrics, those have to sound really beautiful.”

The noise created by moving fabric can seem like indistinct white noise—fuzzy, without a lot of definition. In order to capture the textures of Reynolds’s dresses with exactitude, the sound department composed a collection of “satins and silks and cottons and linens and fabrics with textures and some that were smoother.” “Everything that Reynolds is making has to be of the highest quality, and we started building a library of different textures for various fabrics,” Scarabosio said. The team had to be exact; the way that silk might sounds as it moves or is cut, for example, is different from the way cotton or linen might sound. The same conscientiousness is necessary when scoring different types of sewing machines, differentiating between the sound of machine and hand sewing, and even contrasting various types of needles and threads. Each gets its own place in the library. “We’re trying to make it as distinctive as possible,” Scarabosio said.

Scarabosio was also charged with establishing character and tone through sound. In scenes where Alma finally stops pushing up against Reynolds’s strict lifestyle and conforms to his expectations, she becomes nearly silent, and the noises she produces—opening or closing a door, for instance—are far softer. “This is her way of saying, ‘You’re going to have your time and I’m going to have my time,’” explained Scarabosio. Reynolds’s officious sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), in contrast, is “disruptive and deliberate.” “Earlier in the film, every time that she enters, she breaks the moment,” Scarabosio said. “She’ll come in with loud footsteps or she’ll slam a door or she’ll start talking, and all those moments break the initial spell.”

Many of the film’s most crucial scenes take place while Reynolds and Alma are eating around a table, where the familiar noises of chewing, cutting, and scraping soon become overwhelming. In one scene—which Scarabosio said was one of the most difficult to get right—Alma eats breakfast across from Reynolds and his sister Cyril, and in a key moment, scrapes butter across her toast in a way that’s especially grating, both to Reynolds and viewers.

“That was one of those moments where we really had to intensify what was happening in the scene,” Scarabosio said. He and his team tried cutting out all production sound and focusing recorded effects, but instead settled on “a combination of reality and enhanced reality,” which meant finding and recording the right noises to match what was happening in the scene. “We recorded a bunch of various things—plates clacking and silverware dropping and toast being buttered—as did the Foley [artists].” Then, in the studio, the team combined and exaggerated these noises, so they might be as irksome as possible to Reynolds.

And as for how he made that toast-buttering so unbelievably loud? Scarabosio did his diligent carb research. “We buttered a lot of different toasts,” he said. “We did bagels. We did rye. We did sourdough. We tried them all.” The bread that worked best: “Plain white toast,” he said. “When you toast it and get it to that nice dark brown—that and some good sourdough, with a really thick crust.”

It will probably do better than IV. Which doesn't mean much because IV made nothing. BUT! with these nominations I think he's safe for the next movie. When he got 35 millions, everyone knew they were losing money.

Very cool. Fun tidbit: I had emailed with Rian about writing a little something about The Master for C&RV back in 2012. I think he was into the idea but for whatever reason it never ended up happening.

Turns out their Rian Johnson episode just replaced (pushed back) their Phantom Thread episode. Oh well. It's still a great deep dive into TLJ.

The box office results don't have such a burden for artsy films. Paul is going to secure the funding for his next project no matter the disappointing business outcome of this film. How much of a profit does his other work have on home video and streaming?

I'm a bit surprised by that given the glowing reviews and "DDL's last movie" as the big draw. We'll see how it does since it's gotten all these Oscar nominations. Plus I have a bit of a hunch that it'll perform better in the foreign market than IV, given its setting of dressmaking in Britain and DDL, but I really don't have any evidence to support my hunch beyond that.

Edit: I saw Phantom Thread two times over the weekend at my local Landmark cinema, the first time early in the afternoon and the second time late at night on a Saturday. During the afternoon screening, there were some small groups of older people scattered about and I think one young dude by himself at the back (probably a PTA buff). And then on Saturday, the attendance was about the same but the groups were younger ... and this time there was again another lone presumed PTA buff by himself at the back, plus me by myself at the back. Ha. I found all this sort of amusing.

The box office results don't have such a burden for artsy films. Paul is going to secure the funding for his next project no matter the disappointing business outcome of this film. How much of a profit does his other work have on home video and streaming?

This is not true in the slightest. His ability to finance movies is not a given, and the box office performance absolutely matters.

Wordless Music + London Contemporary OrchestraSaturday, February 24 • Brooklyn Academy of MusicFriday, March 2 • The Theatre at Ace Hotel, Los Angeles

Wordless Music presents the U.S. premiere live score in New York (Saturday, February 24) and Los Angeles (Friday, March 2) of Paul Thomas Anderson’s PHANTOM THREAD, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, and Lesley Manville, with music by Jonny Greenwood, and nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), and Best Score (Jonny Greenwood).

In both cities, Wordless Music Orchestra will team up with principals from London Contemporary Orchestra, who recorded Greenwood’s original score for Nonesuch. Together, the orchestra will perform the entirety of Greenwood’s score, which itself is heard in more than 70% of the film, along with selections from Brahms, Schubert, Fauré, and Debussy. This event marks the third collaboration between Anderson and Wordless Music, following live score premieres for THERE WILL BE BLOOD and PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE.

I attended the Punch-Drunk Love live score event a couple of years ago at the Ace in L.A. It ultimately was worth it--but the $70 price tag (for a mid-range ticket--after all of the bullshit "convenience" fees and assorted other ripoffs) still gives me pause. I'm assuming this will cost considerably more?

I'm a bit surprised by that given the glowing reviews and "DDL's last movie" as the big draw. We'll see how it does since it's gotten all these Oscar nominations. Plus I have a bit of a hunch that it'll perform better in the foreign market than IV, given its setting of dressmaking in Britain and DDL, but I really don't have any evidence to support my hunch beyond that.

Edit: I saw Phantom Thread two times over the weekend at my local Landmark cinema, the first time early in the afternoon and the second time late at night on a Saturday. During the afternoon screening, there were some small groups of older people scattered about and I think one young dude by himself at the back (probably a PTA buff). And then on Saturday, the attendance was about the same but the groups were younger ... and this time there was again another lone presumed PTA buff by himself at the back, plus me by myself at the back. Ha. I found all this sort of amusing.

It's harder than ever to get people to go and see movies. Phantom Thread haemorrhaging money shouldn't be a surprise, sad as it is.